Tea Forte Advent Calendar: Day 21 - White Ambrosia

 

When I first opened the little door and saw the title of this tea I said out loud to my kitchen "what the hell is White Ambrosia?"  

As much as I love Earl Grey, Lady Grey, Russian Caravan and other like-named blends, new blends that have names that tell me NOTHING about what to expect from the flavour have a tendency to annoy me - especially in the morning before I've had my first cup of tea!  I acknowledge that this is a silly first world problem with more than a touch of hypocrisy and no basis of logic.

So then, after reading the description on the bottom of the box.... "The flavors of rich vanilla and coconut complement delicate white tea leaves" I was... perplexed?  Slightly worried?  I'm not sure how best to describe the emotion - but it wasn't excited or overly hopeful for the blend.  

White tea is such a delicate flavor that I was worried that the vanilla might overpower the tea altogether if the tea blender put too much in.  As for the coconut, well, I don't find coconut in tea very often without it being paired with other tropical fruits that always seem to overpower it completely.  On top of that, I couldn't even fathom with the combination of coconut and vanilla would taste like.  I had a vanilla flavoured coconut based ice cream once, so I thought it might taste similar to that - but in that case, the coconut was all but hidden by the vanilla and only made an appearance as an aftertaste.

Turns out, I didn't need to be worried about any of the flavours overpowering the others because the very light cup of tea just tasted like warm water with a slight aftertaste that I can only describe as unsweetened coconut pudding.

The best I can say is that in terms of flavour, it's a step (albeit a small one) above chamomile.